Camp Followers

CAMP FOLLOWERS. As American revolutionaries in 1775–1776 created the forces they needed to ensure success against British arms, they had to grapple with their hostility to regular armies. One part of their antagonism, other than the ideological, was a distaste for some of the baggage that accompanied established militaries. They did not disdain the materiél, that is, the arms, ammunition, food, shoes, and other supplies and equipment. Rather, it was the personnel they tended to despise. There were a number of reasons for that. One was the cultural baggage of British officers and soldiers: their mental maps of who were superiors and inferiors. Their conceptions of colonists as backward provincials and imperial servants infuriated the Americans. The Revolutionaries, in turn, perceived Britain's regular soldiers as myrmidons accompanied by nasty minions. The Americans were determined that the same could not be said of their own forces. This led them to tout reliance on militias rather than on an army and then, when that proved untenable, to celebrate their servicemen as citizen-soldiers. It also led them to discount their own camp followers even after they proved useful.

While American revolutionaries may have contemplated creating their own new model army, they actually—guided by General George Washington—consciously modeled the Continental Army upon European, and specifically British, forces. Those armies utilized civilian adjuncts—job-related followers who were employed by or engaged in sanctioned trade with the forces—for essential supplies and services. They also had family followers. Eighteenth-century militaries had such followers because of the kind of men who served, how long they served, and the nature of the service itself. At times they also had them because of refugee issues. The American army accumulated followers for the same reasons. It tried to minimize the numbers, impact, and dependency (both of the followers on the army and the army on followers) at various times, but ultimately the Continental army maintained its followers because the institution and its men, like the British army, needed them.

WIVES AND OTHER CAMP FOLLOWERS

British army officers generally came from the gentry while the soldiers came from the lower orders. While many young gentlemen bought a commission, served a short while, and then sold out, many others made the army a career. When those who did so married, their wives became the ladies of the regiment. Soldiers usually enlisted for life (although special circumstances could limit the term) and found that the military then exercised command over their choice and support of a spouse. A soldier had to have permission to marry if he wanted his wife to be recognized, that is, rationed and billeted, by the regiment. Permission was generally predicated upon a soldier's seniority and good service and the woman's behavior. When the army had to expand rapidly for war, it accepted wives in order to recruit their spouses. Rank and regulation thus affected the number and treatment of family followers.

Deployment determined whether spouses, children, and servants were true camp followers. While many British officers' wives maintained households in garrison towns, fewer actually accompanied their husbands when they shipped out for war. More soldiers' spouses would have probably embarked than actually did had it not been for regimental quotas determining how many wives could travel with the troops. The quotas varied, but they generally allowed up to six women per company (about one woman to every ten men in a typical company) and came with the caveat that such women would receive rations only in return for such services as nursing, washing, and cooking for the soldiers. Even so, once the army was on the move it picked up more followers, thus making a determination of the average ratio of followers to soldiers difficult (but apparently greater than one to ten). Some wives, concubines, and children remained with the regiments as officers' servants or simply snuck by. Others in the actual theaters of war, as in America, attached themselves to soldiers who encamped near their homes. Some of those American women followed the British drum for love, others for money.

Still other Americans accompanied the British army for security or opportunity or in loyalty. During the War for Independence refugees flocked to and then followed the British army starting with its evacuation of Boston in 1776. As American Revolutionaries tightened their control of communities through the use of patrolling militias, loyalty oaths, and confiscation of enemy property, more Loyalists fled to British lines. Some of those men either joined that army or Tory extramilitary organizations. Others served the British army in civilian capacities, as supply contractors or servants or the like. Such followers included African Americans. Most were fugitive slaves responding to words and actions (from Lord Dunmore's Proclamation in November 1775 to the tactics used by British and Loyalist forces in Georgia and South Carolina from late 1779 onward), offering independence to those who would run away from rebellious masters and serve with the British forces. Others were "contraband" or were impressed into military labor. Whether black or white, acting as soldiers or servants, if their families followed, they had the task of trying to reestablish households within the limitations of camps and garrisons. Other women, some of those who had flirted and more with British officers and soldiers in Philadelphia and elsewhere, also ended up following the British army.

REGULATING CAMP FOLLOWERS

The British forces regulated their camp followers, whether they had been brought from England or acquired in America, so that they would be useful to the troops and not undermine health or discipline. Commanding officers issued numerous orders stating where accompanying women could go and what they were to do. They threatened punishment to those who stole, sold illegal liquor, or engaged in licentious activities (especially if they passed on sexually transmitted diseases). Noncompliance could result in the revocation of rationing or licenses for trade or in whipping and banishment.

The hired German forces did the same with the many women and children who accompanied them. In return for rations and permission to bunk with their men, the women were expected to obey orders and work and forage for their keep. Observers tended to describe them as dirty beasts of burden. The Baroness Frederika von Riedesel, who followed her husband, General Friedrich Riedesel, to America, was anything but that. She was an aristocrat who distinguished between ladies and women of the army.

The Continental Army also maintained distinctions among its female adjuncts. Premier among its ladies was Martha Washington. In the late months of 1775 she made the first of many treks to join her husband over the course of the war. She and other generals' wives, such as Catharine Greene and Lucy Knox, generally stayed only so long as the troops remained in camp and their spouses had some time for socializing. Once the campaign commenced, these consorts generally, though not always immediately, returned home. Wives of more junior officers, if they came to camp at all, appear to have followed that example. There were, of course, exceptions, as some officers' wives, like many soldiers' spouses, stayed with the army throughout a campaign. If a man left a farm or business, the likelihood was that the family remained to carry on. Only those who had others to see to things had the time and resources to make visits to camp. On the other hand, those with nothing had little to lose in choosing to follow the army, and those who had already lost everything saw military encampments as refuges.

Some Canadians who fought at Quebec and formed the cores of the Continental Army's First and Second Canadian regiments marched into exile in 1776. The wives and children of many of these men trudged south with them and stayed with the American army for the rest of the war. When the British took and held areas, such as New York City and later Charleston, families of men in or joining the Continental service with nowhere else to go set out for camp as well.

The Continental Army could not limit followers by enlisting only single men, forbidding soldiers to marry, or barring families from camp. Doing so would have resulted in even fewer men in the service. It did, however, try to manage the escalating numbers of followers. There appear to have been fewer of them in the early years of the war than later. That may have been due to the reliance on militia in the first year, the short-term enlistments of the men in the next, and other priorities in the army's organization. By 1777 there were more mentions of women in regulations and ration lists. As the war widened and the Continental army became more of a regular army, it accumulated more of the baggage common to such forces. By 1781 such administrators as the adjutant general, secretary at war, and superintendent of finance wanted to regularize rationing of women, suggesting a ratio of one to every fifteen men. Washington disagreed, for—as he explained in 1783—that could actually have increased the number of women rationed. He thought it better to accept a surplus of women with some regiments rather than impose a uniform policy throughout the army. He had a point. Some regiments, especially those with men and families from British-occupied areas, did have more followers, but others had far fewer. Overall, based on limited returns and keeping in mind that numbers changed given the time, place, and unit, it appears that the number of adult women followers averaged out to approximately three percent, or one to every thirty men.

Accepting rations meant accepting regulations. As retainers (meaning those maintained or employed by the army), followers were subject to orders under the Articles of War. Continental army officers commonly directed when, where, and how followers were to travel with and work for the troops. Some orders directed followers to stay with the baggage and off the wagons. Others stipulated what washerwomen could charge for laundry and what male and female sutlers could charge for the liquor and other goods they sold. Such orders promised punishment for noncompliance. The same held true if a follower was found pilfering or plundering. Serious offenses could result in court-martial and banishment.

Although some followers were troublemakers, most proved useful to their respective armies in numerous ways. Peddlers provided both necessities and luxuries. Family members and servants (black and white) cooked and cleaned for officers as well as soldiers. Some women volunteered for nursing duty, while others who were already followers found themselves essentially drafted for the task. Through all of these services, followers contributed to the cohesion and continuing operation of their forces. That proved especially important to the establishment of the army of the United States.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Hacker, Barton C. "Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 6 (1981): 643-671.

Hagist, Don N. "The Women of the British Army in America." The Brigade Dispatch 24, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 2-10; 24, no. 4 (Autumn 1994): 9-17; 25, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 11-16; and 25, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 8-14. Also available online at http://www.revwar75.com/library/hagist/britwomen.htm.

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Rees, John U. "The Number of Rations Issued to the Women in Camp: New Material Concerning Female Followers with Continental Regiments." The Brigade Dispatch 28, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 2-10; and 28, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 2-13.

Tharp, Louise Hall. The Baroness and the General. Boston: Little, Brown, 1962.